Speed Up Slow Firefox 3.5 Windows Start-Ups
Firefox 3.5 pulls data from certain file locations for randomised security purposes. Sometimes, though, that can lead to annoying slow start-ups in Windows. You can speed things up by cleaning out certain folder locations.
For whatever reason, having too many temporary, history or recent document files sitting in your Windows locations slows down Firefox 3.5’s data generation processes, as has been reported as a bug. The Mozilla Links blog recommends cleaning out these folders to move the browser’s work along:
C:Documents and Settings*user*Local SettingsHistory
C:Documents and Settings*user*Local SettingsTemporary Internet Files
C:Documents and Settings*user*My Recent Documents
C:Documents and Settings*user*Temp
On Vista or Windows 7 systems, simply replace “Documents and Settings” with “Users.” Setting up Firefox to automatically clean out your temporary files after browsing, as explained at the link below, helps prevent the accumulation from building again, but users who trade browsing time with Internet Explorer may have to occasionally work this manual method to wipe out those files.
Workaround for Firefox 3.5 slow startups on Windows [Mozilla Links]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
CCLEANER appears to clean out all those directories.
Has an option to Put in Start Up
Here’s a Windows script file I made by assembling various parts from around the web. Open notepad, copy and paste the code, and save it as Firefox.vbs. I tested it on Windows XP with no problems. May require tweaks for other OS versions. The script deletes the temp files and then loads Firefox for you. It cut my load time from 3 minutes back down to 3 seconds.
(You will have to change the file type in the save dialog to “All Files” or notepad will change your filename to Firefox.vbs.txt which won’t work!)
‘—– Begin Copy Here —-
SUB DeleteFiles(strDirectory)
on error resume next
Dim oFSO
Dim sDirectoryPath
Dim oFolder
Dim oDelFolder
Dim oFileCollection
Dim oFile
Dim oFolderCollection
Set oFSO = CreateObject(”Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
set oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder(strDirectory)
set oFolderCollection = oFolder.SubFolders
set oFileCollection = oFolder.Files
For each oFile in oFileCollection
oFile.Delete(True)
Next
For each oDelFolder in oFolderCollection
oDelFolder.Delete(True)
Next
Set oFSO = Nothing
Set oFolder = Nothing
Set oFileCollection = Nothing
Set oFile = Nothing
END SUB
Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject (”WScript.shell”)
strUserName = wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( “%USERNAME%” )
DeleteFiles “C:\Documents And Settings\” & strUserName & “\Recent”
DeleteFiles “C:\Documents And Settings\” & strUserName & “\Local Settings\Temp”
DeleteFiles “C:\Documents and Settings\” & strUserName & “\Local Settings\History”
wshshell.run “”"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”"”
set wshshell = nothing
‘— End Copy Here —
This bug is now resolved, just FYI. So no need to do this now.